MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – A vast network of labor unions, progressive organizations and clergy has been urging Minnesotans to stay away from work, school and stores Friday to protest immigration enforcement in the state.
“We really, really want ICE to leave Minnesota, and they’re not going to leave Minnesota unless there’s a ton of pressure on them,” said Kate Havelin of Indivisible Twin Cities, one of more than 100 groups mobilizing. “They should not be roaming in any street in our country just as they are now.”
The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have seen daily protests since Renee Good was fatally shot by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer during an operation on January 7.
On Thursday, a prominent civil rights attorney and at least two other people involved in an anti-immigration enforcement protest that disrupted a Sunday service at a Minnesota church were arrested.
Vice President JD Vance visited Minneapolis to meet with ICE officials. He has repeatedly said he believes the fraught situation in Minneapolis will improve with better cooperation from state and local officials, and urged the protests to remain peaceful.
Friday’s mobilization was planned as the largest coordinated protest action yet, including a march in downtown Minneapolis despite dangerously cold temperatures that the National Weather Service predicted to be in the single or double digits below zero (-20 to -30 degrees Celsius).
While the organizations asked participants to prepare for the cold, Havelin compared the presence of immigration enforcement only to such winter weather warnings.
“Minnesotans understand that when we’re in a snow emergency … we all have to respond and it forces us to do things differently,” she said. “And what’s happening with ICE in our community, in our state, means we can’t respond as usual.”
More than a hundred small businesses in the Twin Cities, mostly coffee shops and restaurants, said they would close in solidarity or donate part of their profits, organizers said.
Ethnic businesses especially have lost sales during the increased enforcement as both workers and customers stay away for fear of being detained.
But some are deciding to shut down anyway, preferring to take a stand of solidarity rather than the “unscheduled interruption” that agents would have to staff, said Luis Argueta of Unidos MN, a civil rights group.
Many schools were planning to close for various reasons. The University of Minnesota, which has about 50,000 students enrolled, said there will be no in-person classes due to the extreme cold warning, and the St. Paul public school district said there will be no classes for the same reason. Minneapolis Public Schools were also scheduled to be closed Friday “for a teacher record keeping day.”
Clergy planned to join the march as well as hold prayer and fasting services, according to a delegation of representatives of faith traditions ranging from Buddhist to Jewish, Lutheran to Muslim.
Bishop Dwayne Royster, leader of the progressive organization Faith in Action, arrived in Minnesota on Wednesday from Washington, DC
“We want ICE out of Minnesota,” he said. “We want them out of all the cities across the country where they are exercising extreme overreach.”
Royster said at least 50 of his network’s faith-based organizers from across the United States were joining the protest.
About 10 faith leaders were planning to travel to Minnesota from Los Angeles while others from the same group planned a solidarity rally in California, one of the organizers there said.
“It was a very painful experience,” said the Rev. Jennifer Gutierrez of the major enforcement operation in Los Angeles last year. “We believe that God is on the side of the migrants.”
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Associated Press reporters Jack Brook and Sarah Raza in Minneapolis, and Tiffany Stanley in Washington contributed.